


Safe in Your Arms

by LibraryMage



Series: Break Your Chains [26]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Character, Autistic Ezra Bridger, Father-Son Relationship, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 02:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14416080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: Ezra's nightmares didn't stop with Maul's death.





	Safe in Your Arms

**Author's Note:**

> warning for: references to past child abuse; references to past character death

_“Master, please!”_

Ezra heard someone screaming and a second later, he realized it was him.

“Ezra.”

There was a hand on his shoulder and Ezra pulled away with a cry of…pain, terror, he didn’t know.

“Ezra, it’s okay,” a gentle voice said.  “I’ve got you.  You’re safe.”

_Kanan._   That was Kanan’s voice.  The arms closing around him and pulling him close were Kanan’s.  The hand running across his hair as he was carefully rocked back and forth was Kanan’s.  He was safe with Kanan on Lothal.

Ezra slid his arms around Kanan, clinging to him, shaking as he buried his face in Kanan’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Kanan whispered.  “It’s okay.  I’ve got you.  He’s gone.  He can't hurt you.”

Ezra didn’t know how long Kanan held him, rocking him gently and trying to soothe him, but eventually his breathing slowed from sharp, terrified gasps to something closer to normal.  Still, he didn’t stop clinging tightly to Kanan, and Kanan’s grip on him didn’t waver.

He’d thought the nightmares would stop now that Maul was no longer a threat, but they were only getting worse.  He woke up screaming or crying or frozen in terror every time that he slept.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kanan asked, his voice soft.

It took Ezra a moment to process the question.

“Maul,” he said, his voice muffled from his face pressing into Kanan’s shoulder.  It was all he could say.  He didn’t even know if he _wanted_ to tell Kanan about the dream, about Maul towering over a smaller, younger, terrified Ezra, who was crying and begging for mercy as he was beaten for some act of disobedience.

Kanan just held Ezra tighter, not pushing him to say anything else.

“He --” Ezra’s voice broke off as he shook violently in Kanan’s arms.  “He didn’t care if I cried or I begged him to stop.  That just made it worse.”

“He can't do it again,” Kanan said.  “He’s gone.  He can never hurt you again.”

Ezra squirmed out of Kanan’s grasp, crawling backwards along the floor away from Kanan as guilt gnawed at his chest.  It was supposed to be over.  Maul was supposed to be gone, but Ezra couldn’t go an hour without the memory of his former master haunting him.  He felt like he was betraying Kanan by being so wracked with guilt and uncertainty and pain over killing the man who’d tortured him.  And even after all they’d been through, there was still some small part of him that thought sooner or later, Kanan would have had enough of this and hurt him for it.  And Ezra wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t deserve it.

“Ezra, I won't hurt you,” Kanan said.

Ezra pressed himself farther back against the wall of the _Phantom_.  He had barely been bothering to shield his mind these past few days and Kanan must have sensed his fear, which only made Ezra feel more twisted up inside.  Kanan was being so patient and gentle with him and Ezra didn’t know what to do with that.  He didn’t know what to do with _anything_ that was happening right now.  The pain, the fear, the _guilt_.  The guilt was the worst part.  It didn’t make any sense.

“I know,” Ezra muttered, more to himself than to Kanan.  “I _know_ , but I --”

The words caught in his throat.  How could he admit that he was still afraid of Kanan hurting him even when on some level he knew it wouldn’t happen?  How could he say that to Kanan’s face after everything Kanan had done for him?

“But I keep thinking you will,” he said.  “It’s not your fault.  You didn’t do anything, but I -- I feel like I shouldn’t keep thinking about him.  I know it hurts you, and I know you’re angry --”

“I’m not angry at you, Ezra,” Kanan said.  “I promise I’m not.  You’re not the one hurting me.  It was all him.  I’d never expect you to move past what you had to do so quickly.”

“I should just be happy he’s dead,” Ezra said.  “He can't hurt me anymore.  He can’t hurt _you_ anymore.  But I -- I killed him, Kanan.”

His voice cracked and Ezra felt burning hot tears stinging at the corners of his eyes.  He reached out across his bond with Kanan, clinging to it like he was drowning and there was nothing else to hold onto.  Sensing exactly what Ezra wanted and his inability to put it into words, Kanan moved closer and pulled Ezra into his arms again.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Kanan said.

“I killed my master,” Ezra said, the words coming out before he could stop them.

“He’s not your master,” Kanan said.  His voice was soft, with no trace of the anger Ezra could feel even as Kanan tried to shield him from it.  “He was your abuser and your torturer.”

“I know,” Ezra said, his voice breaking again as he began truly crying.  “I _know_ , but I --”

His voice broke off, his breath coming in sharp gasps again.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.  “I shouldn’t have said that.  I know he’s not.”

“It’s okay,” Kanan said.

“I didn’t want to,” Ezra said.  “I mean, I _did_ want to, but...I didn’t.”

“I know,” Kanan said.  “I’m so sorry.  You never should have had to do this.”

“He hurt me,” Ezra said.  “He almost killed you.”

“But you grew up with him,” Kanan said.  For a second, his arms tightened around Ezra, a wordless preemptive apology for what he was about to say.

“Hera told me what you said to her in the medbay back on Atollon,” he said.  “That when you were a kid, you thought of him as…” his voice broke off and the next words were spoken like he couldn’t bear to say them.  “…as something like a father.  You should never have had to kill someone you ever thought of that way, and there’s nothing wrong with you for not wanting to do it.”

Ezra wanted to argue.  He wanted it desperately.  But he couldn’t.  The words were sticking in his throat, refusing to move.  And even more than that, he just wanted Kanan to keep holding him and telling him it was okay and everything would be alright.

And he did.  Kanan’s embrace never wavered as he held Ezra tightly against his chest, letting him cry into his shoulder until he’d run out of tears.

* * *

 

Kanan held Ezra until the kid had cried himself out and fallen asleep in his arms.  He carefully laid Ezra back down and tucked the blanket that had been tossed aside around him.  He held onto Ezra’s hand for a moment, wishing he could look at his son’s face even just for a second.

He hadn't thought it was possible to hate Maul more than he already did, but as Kanan clung to Ezra's hand, he felt his hatred for Maul growing stronger by the second.  Maul had called Ezra his son and had claimed to care about him, but he’d hurt Ezra so badly that Ezra had felt pushed to the point of killing someone he once looked up to and thought of as the closest thing he had left to family.  Kanan didn’t want to acknowledge that part of the role Maul had played in Ezra’s life, but it was causing Ezra so much pain that he couldn’t ignore it.  As much as Ezra feared him, he’d also looked up to Maul and _wanted_ Maul to care about him.  Ezra had trusted Maul, and in the end Ezra had felt forced to kill him to protect himself and his family.

Ezra might be safe now, but the damage had already been done.  Years of abuse followed by Maul’s attempts to hunt Ezra down and drag him back by force had worn Ezra down and broken him so thoroughly that he might never come back from it.  And killing Maul seemed to have only made it worse.  Even in death, Maul had still found a way to hurt them.

It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t right.  Ezra was just a kid.  Just a seventeen-year-old kid who’d been forced to kill someone he once trusted with his life, someone he should have been able to count on for protection and genuine love.  Kanan held no illusions about the way the galaxy worked.  He knew Ezra was far from the only child who’d been betrayed like this by someone who should have taken care of them.  But Ezra was _his_ kid, and that just drove home the unfairness of it all.

“I am so sorry, Ezra,” Kanan whispered.  “You deserved so much better than this.”


End file.
